Principles of Finance (FIN 311)

Instructor: Donald W. Swanton
Contact Information: office Wabash 1112z, telephone (312) 281-3278, fax (312) 281-3290, email dswanton@roosevelt.edu, web site http://blogs.roosevelt.edu/dswanton/. My web site has information about office hours etc. If this seems a lot to remember, just Google “Swanton Roosevelt”, and this will be the first hit.

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Section 01
Time: Tuesday-Thursday 12:30-1:45
Location: WB 616

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Section 10
Time: Wednesday 6:00-8:30
Location: WB 1015

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Text: Foundations of Financial Management 15th ed. by Block, Hirt, and Danielson, (B), McGraw-Hill ISBN-978-0-07-786161-2. Students should have financial calculator (TI BA-II or II+ or TI 83+, TI84, or TI89). If you bought a graphing calculator for MATH 116 or 121, you have the right one. I will be handing out my Notes on Finance (S) in class as the semester progresses.

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Prerequisites: ACCT 210 (but NOT ACCT 211), ECON 101-102, MATH 116 or 121, ENG 101-102. The mathematics prerequisite is very important. Students who attempt this class before finishing it generally drop the class within a few weeks.

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Goals: This course introduces students to the time value of money. We will develop some of its applications to corporate investment planning, valuation of projects and securities, and to retirement planning. Then we will discuss capital structure (the difference made by the firm’s choice of financing) from both economic and ethical points of view.

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Grades: Grades will be determined by an equally weighted average of the best three out of the four quiz grades and the retirement planning project. Quizzes will receive the numerical version of letter grades, A = 4.00, A/B = 3.50, B = 3.00 B/C = 2.50, etc. It takes an average of at least 3.51 for an A, 2.51 for a B, etc. I do not usually give plusses and minuses.

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Homework: I will assign problems each Thursday due the following Tuesday when we will discuss them. This discussion will include additional parts of some the problems not assigned at first and new problems suggested by student questions. Do not think that because we will go over the answers on Tuesday that you can afford not to try them first. Finance is not a spectator sport. These problems are the heart of the course. They often reappear on subsequent quizzes. I will collect homework and check it in but not grade it.
Attendance: I do not take attendance, however see the section on homework.

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Plagiarism: Please review Roosevelt’s policy on plagiarism

www.roosevelt.edu/plagiarism.

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Religious Holidays: Roosevelt’s policy is to accommodate students who will be celebrating religious holidays, and my policy is to be flexible. Talk to me in the first couple of weeks, and we will work something out.

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The following schedule is tentative. I will revise it as we go along to reflect what we have covered and how much time remains in the semester, and I will put these revisions on my web page. Since I am teaching two sections of FIN 311 I will attempt to cover the same material in both sections every week.

SCHEDULE
As of February 24, 2015

Week Chapters Topics

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Jan 13 B9 Introduction, the time value of money

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Jan 20 B9 More time value of money

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Jan 27 B10 Bond valuation

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Feb 3 S1 Retirement planning

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Feb 10* S1 Retirement planning

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Feb 17 S1 Retirement planning

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Feb 24 B12 Capital budgeting, the process, NPV and IRR

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Mar 3 B12 More NPV and IRR, comparing projects

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Mar 10 ///// Spring Break

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Mar 17* B12, B13 Depreciation and project cash flows

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Mar 24 B12, B13 Interdependent projects

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Mar 31 S2 Cost of capital

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April 7* S2 Capital structure

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Apr 14 S2 The world of Perfect Markets, arbitrage

. Retirement projects due by the end of the week

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Apr 21 S2, S3 Investment decisions with different financing

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Apr 28* ///// Last Quiz

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Quizzes in section 01 will be given on the Thursdays and in section 10 on Wednesdays of weeks marked with an asterisk (*), including the last quiz in final exam week.

THE RETIREMENT PROJECT

Common Version
You are a financial planner. You have clients who are just beginning to think about planning for retirement. They are both thirty five years old and have $80,000 in a company retirement plan which they can roll over into their own plan. They want to retire at 67 but are wondering what effect retiring a year or two earlier or later will have on their retirement. Their combined income is $100,000 per year, and they want to finance the same income in retirement. When they retire they can purchase a two-life annuity with an expected second death at age 87.
They have not taken any finance courses, and their last mathematics course was many years ago. They will not understand equations, formulas, or finance jargon. The words we have been using in FIN 311 are all strange to them. Large tables will make their eyes glaze over. You must explain your recommendations to them in simple, ordinary language. Prepare a plan with some alternative rates of return and retirement dates and explain what annual contributions they must make to the plan to make their retirement what they want. Make your own assumptions about social security by the time they retire. Do not spend too much time talking about tax planning; this is tricky.
Half your grade will be determined by the calculations you choose to make, and half will depend on the clear and simple presentation of your recommendations.

Alternate Version
You may use yourself or someone you know as the client rather than the couple in the first version. This client does not know any more about finance or mathematics than the couple, so you must explain everything in the same simple language.